Blog 13

            When I first opened up this chapter from Dollarhide and Saginak (2012), I already knew what one of the biggest emerging issues in school was, mental health.  After reading some of the chapter, mental health has been growing within the school and while some students come out and say something, others just keep it all in.  I knew that mental health is a big issue in our schools because I have seen in grow from my first year to my second year as a GA for housing at Millersville.  Last year, we had a few mental health issues that need immediate attention, but this year there have been way more.  Just during my on call week for my job during the beginning of the semester, I had six suicidal cases.  That to me was a huge jump from last year.  I also see some other mental health issues also becoming more prevalent like depression and anxiety.  It is no surprise that mental health is an emerging issue in the school but why do you think that is?  Is it because our society has changed and more and more people need help, or is it our DNA that is changing for the worst?  Maybe it could be that since our society knows more about different kinds of mental health issues that people have become more aware of them in the lives of students.  Well, whether it be one or the other, school counselors or even our society need to come up with some kind of solutions so that this issue is no longer an issue for students.

            Amatea, and Clark’s (2005) article was very interesting to read on the topic of what school administrators thought about school counselors.  Over the course of their study they found that school counselors have four different kinds of roles.  They are innovative school leader role, collaborative case consultant role, responsive direct service provider, and administrative team player role.  I think my favorite role and the role that I hope my administrators have is the collaborative case consultant role.  For myself, I love to counsel students and to help them out with their problems, that is my passion.  I would like that to be my primary role even though I know that I will have to be the other roles as well when I finally get a school counseling job.  I thought that it was interesting that administrators had different kinds of roles for school counselors, but I am not shocked at the least because I figured that they would not know everything that a school counselor does.

Amatea, E. S., & Clark, M. (2005). Changing schools, changing counselors: A qualitative study of school administrators' conceptions of the school counselor role. Professional School Counseling, 9, 16-27.

Dollarhide, C.T., & Saginak, K.A. (2012). Comprehensive school counseling programs (2^nd Ed.). New York: Pearson